Fresh off a meeting with President Obama, Ahmed Mohamed—the 14-year-old Texas boy who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school when authorities mistook it for a gun—is moving with his family to Qatar.

Is Ben Carson the most boring person running for president? Doesn't matter, he's still gaining in GOP polls, with support at 22 percent in the latest Washington Post-ABC News survey. Trump's support held relatively steady at 32 percent, while the only other GOP presidential candidate in the double-digits was Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, at 10 percent.

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“Castro’s leadership can be something of a burden, too,” he writes. “[Cubans] do occasionally complain, often as an adolescent might complain about a too strict and demanding father.” And it is true, he admits, that the people are given little or no freedom, and that the country is abjectly poor. That, however, is because the tyrannical United States tormented the small island state, forcing Castro into choosing totalitarianism as the surest means to defend his country from America’s merciless?imperialism. It is not, suggests Trudeau, Castro’s fault that he is a dictator.

Also, it’s worth noting – aside from the fact the media is still popping a stiff over his election – the Trudeaus are what we call old money. They – starting with Pierre the Elder – inherited their wealth and basically lived off it gallivanting the world. To us, this is no biggie but to liberals and progs, this is a mortal sin. They hate inherited wealth, right? But when it’s their guy…

“There is a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green, we need to start, you know, investing in solar. There is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about: having a dictatorship where you can do whatever you wanted, that I find quite interesting.”

Someone should remind him of that comment in a few months when China goes into full implosion.

A large asteroid first discovered by scientists only two weeks ago is set to scream past Earth on Halloween — the closest encounter our planet has had with an asteroid in nearly a decade.

While the asteroid, dubbed 2015 TB145, does not present a threat, it will come within 310,000 miles of Earth — nearly as close as our own moon — and zoom past at an “unusually high” speed of more than 78,000 miles per hour, according to NASA.

I was doing a little work that required some sledgehammering recently, and I actually thought “You know, this thing might the right tool for a zombie outbreak.” Skulls crushed, no problem, and no need to worry about ammo or getting it stuck.

You just need to damage the brain. A small gauge rifle should be best with small gauge sidearm as a backup. You want something that has just enough power to pierce a skull, but doesn’t make too much noise, which attracts more zombies.

Fresh off a meeting with President Obama, Ahmed Mohamed?the 14-year-old Texas boy who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school when authorities mistook it for a gun?is moving with his family to Qatar.

ndeed, it wasn’t until 2012 that the FBI changed its official definition of “forcible rape” from “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” to “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” Despite the popular notion that men make up a relatively small percentage of victims of sexual assault, in 2013 the National Crime Victimization Survey released a statistic that shocked many: Out of 40,000 households surveyed about rape and sexual assault, 38 percent of victims were men. After the survey was published, Lara Stemple, a researcher with the Health and Human Rights Project at UCLA, told Rosin that the experiences of male and female sexual assault victims are “a lot closer than any of us would expect.”

“Anyone, male or female, who has been sexually assaulted, is, by definition, coming to terms with their sense of vulnerability,” said Peter Pollard, a spokesperson for 1in6, an organization dedicated to increasing awareness of and support for male victims of sexual assault.

“Anyone, male or female, who has been sexually assaulted, is, by definition, coming to terms with their sense of vulnerability,”

“By defininition”? I don’t think that means what he thinks it means. And if you count unwanted touching or kissing as sexual assault, as some seem to want to do, it’s far from true even ignoring the “by definition” nonsense.

When I was in high school, I had a (ugly skinhead) girl who went around telling everyone that she planned to drug me at a party so she could have sex with me. I went to that party… and stuck to canned beer. I ended up making out with her friend Nicole, who was damn cute.

The optics may look bad to Alex-Jonesers and their ilk, but it sounds like the kid was offered a pretty good opportunity in Qatar. Let’s hope he hasn’t picked up too many Western habits that will get him in trouble there.

A Saudi Arabian prince is accused by three female staffers of acting like a bizarre party boy ? engaging in a gay-sex act in front of them, threatening a woman’s life, demanding that an assistant fart in his face while others watched and declaring, “I am a prince and I do what I want,” according to a report.

In my experience arab guys from the ME are just weird about sex. Sometimes they hit on me on social media. Theyre all very inexperienced, pushy, and awkward. So that, combined with the spoiled prince thing…yeah.

I find the exact opposite to be true. Unless you mean guys who attend all male schools treat girls with more respect, then I agree. I have been in both situations and I have friends from both backgrounds and the ones from private Catholic school never had any trouble getting a date, and usually with the hotter chicks. I attribute it to the lack of rejections and social stigma of being rejected that you get in a mixed environment. They juts walk up to hot girls and ask them out…in public school that happens in about 3% of the cases. When the Boys school holds a mixer with the girls school it is not “left side of gym is guys and right side is girls with all the girls dancing and the guys picking their noses in the corner”. It is an actual mixer.

I went to an all male HS and have no sisters, 5 brothers. Talking with girls seemed unnatural and strained without daily interaction. Yes, I treated girls with a bit more respect, even put them on a pedastil and that was sometimes a positive with them. More thought I was immature or nerdy.

Gun control advocates, frustrated by repeated failures to pass even moderate restrictions on gun ownership, are trying to forge an alliance with Black Lives Matter and the criminal justice reform movement in a strategy shift aimed at overcoming the lobbying power of the National Rifle Association.

The move marks a recognition that gun control supporters, often galvanized by mass shootings that claim mostly white lives, have tended to neglect the kind of gun violence that ravages minority and urban neighborhoods. In addition, advocates have usually allied with law enforcement even as they signal to white, suburban gun owners that the government isn’t after their hunting rifles ? a tactic that indirectly identifies urban minorities as the problem.

“The movement is too white, said Marc Morial, head of the National Urban League. “There’s no input from communities of color.”

You would think a minority group would want to be protected from a majority.

In the places where black people get killed most often, they are the majority. The BLM folks seem to be either useful idiots or instigators. Unless they want everyone to just be servile to the police, or they want to have more bloody flags to wave around, gun control runs entirely counter to their stated aims.

That sounds like a “communities of color” problem not a gun grabber problem. Did these “communities of color” ever reach out to the grabbers, or are they expecting the grabbers to come to them on bended knee?

While this has the potential to be dangerous, I don’t think it will work out so well for the grabbers once they find the price of BLM movement support.

“After careful consideration of all the generous offers received, we would like to announce that we have accepted a kind offer from Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) for Ahmed to join the prestigious QF Young Innovators Program, which reflects the organization’s on-going dedication to empowering young people and fostering a culture of innovation and creativity.”

The founder of a popular Singapore church was found guilty Wednesday of misappropriating more than $35.5 million in donations to support his wife’s singing career in Asia before helping her break into the U.S. market for evangelization purposes.

Kong Hee, the founder and senior pastor of City Harvest Church, was found guilty with five other church leaders of stealing 24 million Singapore dollars ($17 million) designated for building and investment-related purposes through sham bond investments.

The State Court also found that they used another 26 million dollars ($18.5 million) to hide the first embezzlement from auditors. It is a rare case of corruption of such magnitude in the city-state, which has an image of being highly law-abiding and largely graft-free.

But today’s Democratic Party is generally hostile to the military and timid in foreign affairs. It wants to lead from behind, even if that means America trails after Vladimir Putin’s Russia, draw red lines it doesn’t intend to enforce and transform the military into a booted version of the Peace Corps.

This timidity has spread to the domestic front, where Democrats are terrified of firearms and even mere references to them, clamber for cradle-to-grave security over independence, demand the rich hand over their earned prosperity to those who haven’t earned it, and enable those who too easily get their feelings hurt or believe they have been aggrieved by nebulous forces to claim victim status. It’s a party of handouts and easy living at someone else’s expense.

As Webb’s departure shows, and polls confirm, the extremists in 2015 are the Democrats, not the Republicans. This is exactly why a socialist can generate such heavy support in the party. The roots have been severed.

But today’s Democratic Party is generally hostile to the military and timid in foreign affairs.

I don’t know if “timid” is the right word. Seems more just directionless.

It wants to lead from behind, even if that means America trails after Vladimir Putin’s Russia, draw red lines it doesn’t intend to enforce and transform the military into a booted version of the Peace Corps.

Sort of. But still with lots of murder-drones. I don’t think the problem with Democrats is really lack of bellicosity (but I’m one of these silly people who thinks optional wars should be avoided), but lack of any coherent plan or goals.

This might be a dumb question, but how come nobody is bringing back the Delorean? The generation that grew up in the 80s are finally getting enough money where they can start wasting it on nostalgic purchases.

If they have money to burn on cars, they probably quickly discover the vast selection of far superior choices and buy something else. I’m not sure there has ever been a better time in history to buy a car just for the fun of driving it.

Bishop Ira Combs Jr. leads the predominantly black Greater Bible Way in Jackson, Michigan, and has become a staunch advocate for guns in church.

“If they had security, the assailant would not have been able to reload,” he declared during a sermon weeks after the Charleston attack, according to Reuters. “All of us here are not going to turn the other cheek while you shoot us.”

Combs leads his services flanked by armed security, with several gun-toting guards scattered throughout the congregation like how the Department of Homeland Security deploys undercover air marshals on passenger airlines. The bishop calls it “law enforcement” for the church.

My father spent some time as one of those “northern agitators” in Mississippi in the late 60s. On returning to Long Island, where his parents lived at the time, people would ask him about all the bad racism and stuff down there. His response was to say that it wasn’t really so different, people were just more honest about it down south.

The most overt racism I’ve encountered has been in Europe. I’ve honestly encountered very little truly nasty racism in the US at all.

Almost everyone is way to quick to assume that people who support a political party all agree with everything that every faction of the party thinks. Abortion and gay rights aren’t all that popular among black people overall either, from what I can gather.

Last night, the Liberals and Trudeau surged to victory, largely on the strength of their economic platform. This is good news for Canada: Given the state of the world economy, it is absolutely insane that more rich countries aren’t running larger deficits.

How come? Because this is an incredibly inexpensive moment for governments to borrow money. In fact, it may be the best time in recorded history for sovereigns to load up on debt. Interest rates have been hovering around zero more or less since central banks cut rates during the recession, and given the many economic headwinds before us, it may be a long while before they rise much higher. At points this year, countries have issued bonds with negative interest rates?meaning investors are literally paying governments to hold their money because they can’t think of anything safer to do with it. In circumstances like that, when the global bond markets are basically shouting “treat yo’self” at just about every finance minister in the developed world, the only reasonable move for a government is to borrow and use the free or nearly free money to make investments that might help the economy grow long-term, like building or fixing up roads, bridges, and other infrastructure.

So, I’m sure they noted that part of the cheap borrowing “benefit” is to borrow money you would borrow anyways (for a mortgage or maybe a car) at a fixed rate for a set term. If the government had been, say, putting off a bond sale to finance highways and chose to sell a larger amount of bonds because their annual cost would be the same, that would be leveraging cheap borrowing for good investment. Selling more bonds to finance free shit with the intention of refinancing the debt down the road is like taking out a five year interest only personal loan.

Those last few rounds at the bar and the resulting hangover costs more than the price of some Advil. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported excessive drinking cost the U.S. economy $249 billion in 2010, largely from reduced workplace productivity and resulting health problems.

Binge drinking — five or more drinks on one occasion for men or four or more drinks on one occasion for women — was responsible for 77 percent of the financial toll on the economy. Two of every $5 of costs — more than $100 billion — were paid by governments, the CDC said. The 2010 data, the most recent available, is a marked increase from $223.5 billion in 2006. The economic toll from excessive drinking extends to workplace absenteeism, loss of productivity, car crashes, fires, property damage and death.

On the contrary, this data has been a boon in the gun control debate. Excessive alcohol use kills more people in total, causes more drunk driving deaths than people killed by firearms, and costs much more than injuries caused by firearms. I consider this to be money well-spent.

Irony alert. A student group at Williams College called “Uncomfortable Learning” that asked a conservative female author to speak on campus reportedly rescinded that invitation because ? wait for it ? students were too uncomfortable over the prospect of her speech.

Yes, the whole point of the “Uncomfortable Learning” group was to bring conversations to the elite private campus that ran against the grain of its left-leaning atmosphere. But the controversial speaker, author and cultural critic Suzanne Venker, explained in an op-ed for Fox News that she was disinvited because, she was told, her pending arrival was “stirring a lot of angry reactions among students on campus.”

Georgia police raided a retired Atlanta man’s garden last Wednesday after a helicopter crew with the Governor’s Task Force for Drug Suppression spotted suspicious-looking plants on the man’s property. A heavily-armed K9 unit arrived and discovered that the plants were, in fact, okra bushes.

The officers eventually apologized and left, but they took some of the suspicious okra leaves with them for analysis. Georgia state patrol told WSB-TV in Atlanta that “we’ve not been able to identify it as of yet. But it did have quite a number of characteristics that were similar to a cannabis plant.”

The launch is a major step for the company, which in 2013 was ordered by the Food and Drug Administration to stop selling its Personal Genome Service because the regulatory agency had not approved the tests it offered.

The Personal Genome Service, launched in 2007, analyzed a broad menu of genetic links to disease, including a predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer, certain heart conditions and Alzheimer’s.

23andMe said it is still working with the FDA for approval of those tests, as well as analyses that can predict a person’s response to specific drugs.

Tests for inherited genetic risks of breast cancer, and drug response, are already available in other countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Sweden.

I’m really shocked they’ve made it this far, though. Their starting pitching was starting to get a little wobbly in September. I thought some of the young guys were starting to wear out and, given how terrible their bullpen is, that’d be it. Obviously, I was wrong on that point.

I’m shocked they got past the Dodgers but it seems that Kershaw and Greinke are not necessarily lights out when it comes to the playoffs. Good pitching always beats good hitting, and given the caliber of the Mets’ starting rotation, even if they are a bit wobbly they are still well above average and have gotten clutch hits, heads up plays (Murphy stealing third while the Dodger defense was gamboling about the infield after a shift) and some key defense (Granderson stealing a home run). I didn’t watch all of last nights game but early on the home plate umpire seemed to making a lot of questionable strike calls.

In Kentucky you can get a DUI while riding a horse on your own property.

I asked your question of a state trooper giving a “Driver’s Education” course I had to take years ago to keep from getting points (which was nothing but a 4 hours rant about drunk driving.) He scoffed, refused to answer and asked if I wanted to fail the class.

I was too afraid to ask. Four more hours of that boring shit would have killed me. I went the wrong way down a confusingly signed one way street. Of course I needed to be yelled at for four hours about DUI.

In FL, you’re only eligible for a DUI on horseback if you are affirmatively controlling the horse. If, for example, your reins are tied around the saddle horn or otherwise not in your hand, you can beat the rap.

Georgia law specifically says motorized vehicle in the DUI section. Not sure about the private v public areas, though. I have a hard time believing that a wheelchair can be defined as a vehicle the same way a bicycle has been.

ObamaCare, with its insurance exchanges and extended coverage. ObamaCare, with its subsidies, patient protections, and its elimination of the pre-existing condition. ObamaCare, with its terrible fucking website that made it infuriatingly difficult? but not impossible? to sign up. For less than the price of the ‘catastrophic’ insurance I was denied, I was able to get coverage comprehensive enough to cover a 90-year-old with one lung.

Best of all, I was able get that colonoscopy.

I drank the syrup. I spent a day on the toilet. I got violated by a doctor whose career choices I find baffling. But it was all worth it.

Because the doctor found and removed two sessile polyps from my colon, both of which were precancerous.

So you can rant to me all you want about the deficient, unconstitutional, big-government, communist health care forced upon us by a leftist dictator; believe me, it will fall on deaf ears. It’s the only thing remotely Canadian about this country, and that is nothing to be “sorry” about. The Affordable Care Act saved me thousands of dollars this year, and will have saved me hundreds of thousands down the road. Also worth mentioning: it potentially saved my life. At the very least, it saved my ass.

And they burned up that strawman. I don’t think anyone is claiming that no one anywhere gets insurance for less and personally benefits from the whole thing. Obviously if you spend a bunch of money and subsidize things, some people are going to come out ahead. That’s not the issue at all. It’s like saying a war was successful because a bunch of people got killed. No, that’s just what happens when you have a war.

Why would the career choice be baffling? Prostate cancer is a leading killer, and is treatable. Just because the method of diagnosing the disease is somewhat undignified shouldn’t deter doctors from becoming experts at it.

So you really don’t give a shit about what it cost anybody else, Obamacare saved you a few bucks and that’s all that matters to you. Livin’ the American Dream – I got mine, you can rot in Hell. But you wanna know why the government is so concerned about you having a healthy asshole? Because it’s assholes like you that make turds like them possible.

A few years ago, when the vicious cracks about Fisher resembling Jabba the Hut (actual sexist BS trolling entertainment story) were hitting peak cruelty, she became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig.

But even as she dropped fifty pounds ? and seemed to hint at some other changes when she said of her fellow “Star Wars” cast members that “We all look a little melted. It’s good to see other melted people” ? she’s maintained her sense of humor and realism. As she observed a few years ago, “I swear when I was shooting those films I never realized I was signing an invisible contract to stay looking the exact same way for the rest of my existence.”

In an April interview, she reiterated the sentiment, saying of her early sex symbol image, “I didn’t like that, because you have to live up to something there.” And in an interview with Palm Beach Illustrated, she jokingly replied to a question of what Leia would be like now by tartly saying, “Elderly. She’s in an intergalactic old folks’ home. I just think she would be just like she was before, only slower and less inclined to be up for the big battle.”

-Put the aviation units of the Army, USMC, and Navy under the control of the Air Force -Put the USMC’s armor and artillery units under the control of the Army -Put the Special Forces units (SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers etc) under the control of the USMC

This way, the Army fights on the land, the Navy runs the ships, the Air Force does the flying, and the USMC is the quick reaction force; no more redundant programs in multiple branches.

Stripping the USMC of its armor and artillery would make it pretty useless in modern warfare, which is all about closely coordinated combined arms. Good luck getting the army to closely coordinate with a rival service.

You can probably make a better case for stripping it of its aircraft, except that the USAF has little to no interest in ground support, and would be pretty useless in that role for the Marines.

The proliferation of Special Forces is pretty silly. Why we have underwater demolitions teams fighting in landlocked deserts has always been a mystery to me.

Or, better yet, we dissolve the USMC as the most useless duplication, Put the ground support aircraft under the Army, since the Air Farce whines whenever it has to play its most important role, but give them the carrier-based aircraft as a consolation.

The Air Force is the most useless duplication. The most common use of airplanes is as tactical and logistical support for the strategic branches (Army and Navy). The Marines semi independent status is easier to defend than the Air Force’s independent status.

The only reason there are still multiple branches was that when the consolidation legislation was being put forward, the Marines knew they were getting axed and lobbied zealously to have the law written as to mandate their existance and minimum size.

I’m not sure how I feel about “up or out”. On the plus side it prevents some stagnation in ideas and makes sure that there is always room for the next generation of leaders. It also prevents too much power from accumulating to a specific person, just because they have been running their office very effectively for 20 years (This can certainly be a problem on the civilian side). On the minus side you encourage even more politicking and end up kicking out a lot of good Majors and Colonels just because they can’t or won’t play the ambition game.

I’m not sure how the quick reaction force would ever get anywhere quickly if it had to wait for helicopters running on an Air Force schedule.

The biggest problem in running a military is the coordination between the elements (read about the aborted mission to rescue the American hostages in Iran, 1980). Things run smoother and fewer people get killed when the different elements (land, air, sea) are part of the same organization and accustomed to working together.

“…If we’re seriously worried about flooding from higher sea levels, then we want to make sure that areas that will be flooded in the future won’t be developed now. We want to limit the investment in buildings that will be swamped, and we want to limit the number of people who’ll have to move. And we want to encourage people who live in those areas now to move away in the near future, before they’re flooded….”

Whatever the deal is with climate change, sea level rise is something that happens, and fairly small rises can expose new areas to flooding and alter shorelines. I very much doubt that large areas are going to become permanently or very frequently flooded. But some coastal areas with large populations are going to have to deal with this sort of thing eventually.

When the suspect started forcing himself on her, she said she “bit his tongue as hard as she could until she heard it snap.”

NCPD officials say the suspect was found at a Waffle House on Northwoods Boulevard after his mother called 911 due to her son “not having a tongue and needing medical assistance.” He was transported to Trident Hospital.

Police say the suspect was identified, and his tongue was located by crime scene and placed into a bag of ice.

Seems that a new world record for the classic NES Super Mario Bros. has just been done ? today, the speed run was completed by a Twitch TV streamer named Darbian who completed the game in 4:57.627 ? just a few seconds shy of five minutes, and just a few hundredths of a second faster than the previous record holder, Blubber, who completed his legendary run in 4:57:69, back in 2014.

As a kid, my brother and I only had like five or six video games (this was back in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, when they were still pretty expensive), so we got pretty pro at the NES and Super NES Mario games. We used to have all sorts of competitions like speed runs, go through the entire game without power-ups, etc. Videos like this tend to make me pretty nostalgic.

Oh, that’s a brilliant business model. Make loans and banking services for a part of the population that’s going to have a very high default rate (which is why regular banks won’t work with them in the first place). I’m sure this would have no negative consequences and would easily be economically feasible.

OK, I just read the linked article and it does a classic bait-and-switch. The cassus belli for this is the predatory payday lenders, yet nowhere in the article does it mention postal banks giving loans. The only proposed USPS banking services the article explicitly mentions is savings; the article also implies they would do check cashing services.

Actually, her Section 8 assistance is to be cut by $25/month, and ‘she might have to move’. She’s been getting the assitance for 20+ years, and there’s no note of any physical problems. Maybe she should, oh, get a job…

My tribe???the technophiles, the Internet enthusiasts, the conference-speakers???is thrilled about Uber. I’m not. I know I’m swimming against the tide here, but I’m going to say it: I don’t think Uber is a good idea for American cities. Before I drown under a flood of angry responses from around the Internets, hear me out: This fight is about public values. When it comes to city-wide transport and communications networks, serving everyone at a high basic level fairly???including drivers???is more important than permitting a single company to make enormous profits from a substitute basic private service.

permitting a single company to make enormous profits from a substitute basic private service

So… whatever benefits the drivers and riders might perceive are to be ignored because someone is making a dirty profit. Oh, and nice implication that we want a monopoly – that’s not a strawman or anything.

It’s driving some people insane how popular Uber is, and I can understand why. It’s a large scale multi year story about private business breaking down a government monopoly for the public good. Everything about it goes against progressive values, and they can’t do anything to stop it because it is such a extreme case of government failure that the population revolts when they try.

Fresh off a meeting with President Obama, Ahmed Mohamed?the 14-year-old Texas boy who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school when authorities mistook it for a gun [sic]?is moving with his family to Qatar.

That’s a good question, but there is no way of knowing whether he’s really that stupid/delusional, or whether he knows it won’t work and planning to use that not-workingness as a pretext for going full communist. I suspect the latter, but it’s more important to combat scocialism than to speculate about ultimately unknowable personal motives.

Nah, Bern seems sincere to me. It’s the oily machine politic weasels that run places like NY that worry me more. They want to go full-on commie not because they believe any of that claptrap, but because it will give them immense power.